All patents, patent applications, and publications cited within this application are incorporated herein by reference to the same extent as if each individual patent, patent application, or publication was specifically and individually incorporated by reference.
UV curable polymers have been used in the fabrication of passive and active (e.g., electro-optic) optical waveguide devices. One of the main advantages of UV curable polymers is that they become solvent resistant on crosslinking, which allows subsequent polymer layers to be deposited. Additionally, UV curing can be accomplished at lower temperatures than thermal curing, which may avoid problems like cracks or loss of adhesion due to thermal expansion mismatches with the substrate or other polymer layers. UV curable polymers are particularly advantageous for the fabrication of electro-optic (EO) polymer devices since avoiding high temperature thermal curing is crucial to preserve poling induced EO activity and the structural integrity of the chromophore. However, commercially available UV curable polymers typically are unsuitable for developing commercially viable electro-optic polymer devices. For example, of the number of commercially available passive polymers, UV-15 from Masterbond has been used for many years to fabricate electro-optic polymer devices even though it has relatively high optical loss and undesirable mechanical strength after the fabrication process, which provides little protection of stacks from process damage (see, for example, H. C Ling, et al., J. Appl. Phys. 70(11), 6669 (1991); R. R. Barto, et al., ACS Poly. Mater. Sci. Eng. 83, 167 (2000); and M. -C. Oh, et al., IEEE J. Sel. Top. Q. Chem. 7(5), 826, (2001). Other properties that are important for electro-optic polymer devices and need to be improved over current commercially available polymers include conductivity around the poling temperature of the electro-optic polymer core, dielectric constant at operating temperatures and frequency, and properties related DC bias drift.